Waxing and sugaring often are put within the same classification of hair removal because they are slightly similar in the way they remove hair. Both are made to lift hair from the follicle. As the hair is extracted by its roots, it does not regrow for 2 – 6 weeks.

But, they’re different from each other in a few ways. The methods utilize various ingredients and you might have a preference for sensitive skin.

As both waxing and sugaring are painful, some folks report that sugaring is less so and might be better for the regions of the body which are more susceptible to pain.

Waxing Method

Waxing is better done if hair is ½” long, as it must be securely gripped and cannot be too short.

Wax is heated to liquefy it then applied warm to your skin, which carries a burn risk if you are not careful. Wax is applied within the direction of hair growth. It’s covered using a cloth and permitted to solidify. Then it’s removed against the hair growth grain. Some believe that it’s more uncomfortable than sugaring. Because longer hair is necessary for removal, waxing only can be done every 3 - 4 weeks.

Sugaring Method

There are two kinds of sugar for hair removal— gel and paste. The paste is like it sounds, it is extremely thick and has that kind of consistency. It is applied with the hands within the opposite direction of hair growth. One strip of cloth then is applied over the sugar and extracted the same direction that the hair grows. With hair being extracted within the way it grows, there’s less pulling on your skin, making it less painful. It is applied at room temperature and because it’ll remove hair in the direction that it grows, it might extract hair as short as 1/16th”.

Sugaring gel is a likewise consistency to wax. It is heated up inside a microwave or warmer and is applied like wax—within the direction of hair growth then extracted in the opposite way using a cloth strip or muslin.

Sugar paste never is hot. Sugar paste is utilized lukewarm so there isn’t any opportunity of burning the skin. However, sugaring gel may get overheated with the risk of a burn.

Sugaring may be done every 8 - 10 days as your hair doesn’t have to be longer to extract it. Some folks report that sugaring only will take away dead cells, unlike waxing which additionally extracts live skin cells. If the skin is not already over-exfoliated you do not have to be concerned with the sugar accidentally removing the skin.

Where to Use Waxing or Sugaring

Specific body areas are more sensitive than others. The biggest pain offenders are the chest, upper lip, genital and bikini areas. Sugaring, particularly with the paste, comes in handy when eliminating hair in these areas. If you’ve tried waxing and it was too uncomfortable, you might want to attempt sugaring for these areas.

The body sugaring technique of hair removal originally is considered to be an ancient Egyptian artform, even reported to have been used by Cleopatra! The Persian ladies were the original ones to state that a hairless body was the epitome of youth and beauty. It’s why they eventually used a sugaring paste or wax referred to as ‘moum’ made of water, sugar, and lemon for hair removal. This paste was applied within the direction of hair growth, covered up with a muslin cloth then pulled off as it cooled. It was believed to be the most natural and effective method of body hair removal. The ancient Egyptian hair removal art only has recently been revived within the modern-day age, as hairless, smooth skin is the desire of most females today.

Recent rumors that circulate around the web imply that females have just been extracting hair from their legs for the past hundred years, but, that might just be a fact for European and American women. The truth that body hair removal for Europeans was not too popular gives way to the truth that American females did not shave, seeing as the majority of immigrants were European.

But, in ancient Greece, Egypt, and Middle Eastern countries, body hair removal was very important. As a matter of fact, these ladies removed the majority of their body hair (except for the eyebrows), not to mention the women in Egypt who went so far as to remove their head hair. Even having their hair down under was believed to be uncivilized by the majority of Greek, Middle Eastern, and Egyptian standards. Knowing what we now know, we may conclude that body sugaring involves one of the top techniques (if not THE TOP!) for hair removal. It’s the least painful, safest, and most efficient (both in terms of application and cost) as compared with others AND may easily be prepared at home. Therefore, what say we put away those strips and wax forever and make a little room for juice and sugar!

Bare Body Sugaring even utilizes the exact same natural formula as the ancient Egyptians. The sugar paste we use is made only of lemon juice, sugar, and water to provide flawless, smooth skin. The formula easily is washed away with hot water, and leaves you feeling clean without that sticky feeling which waxing offers you. Here’s the best part – it’ll contain absolutely no toxins, chemicals, or resins which may be harsh upon sensitive skin.

Bring Your Inner Royalty Out

Sugaring is a tried and true, near-painless hair removal method which results in silky, soft skin. Not just is it less uncomfortable than waxing, it also is completely natural and safe –it’s even possible to eat it! Sugaring does not only remove hair, it’ll permanently reduce hair growth. Bring out your inner Cleopatra by attempting one of our different sugaring services rather than wax, from a bikini and half- or full-legs to underarms and eyebrows!

We know a lot about sugar here at Bare Body Sugaring; we’ve learned about how it can be used in foods, household care and skincare. We’ve learned how sugar beets and sugarcane are refined into the table sugar in our homes. We’ve even learned that body sugaring has been around for thousands of years, since the ancient Egyptians, and that body hair removal has been around for millenia as a standard of beauty. Today, we’re going to dive into the history of the product that brought it all to us; the sugar itself.

Sugarcane was the first source of sugar, and the people in the Bengal region of India began refining it into sugar around 3000 years ago; the substance they made was known as guda, and it was not nearly as refined as modern sugar. The sugary substance began making its way to other areas, with the Roman Pliny the Elder remarking it was a honey-like substance that was good for soothing the stomach when added to water.

Indian sailors loved sugar (don’t we all), so they’d bring it with them on their trips overseas. They would share the sugar with the people they met in foreign lands, who became interested in the cultivation and refining of sugarcane. The Middle East, as a result of their interest, picked up the techniques from India and began their own sugar production in the Middle Ages. This region, being much closer to Europe than India, began selling sugar as an expensive spice to the Europeans, who now considered it a flavorful additive to food, and not as medicine. Sugar remained prohibitively pricey for most until around 1400, when better sugar presses were developed to improve production and reduce cost.

During the Renaissance, there were efforts by colonial powers to extract as much resources from the New World as possible; this is when sugar entered it’s darkest period. Sugarcane was imported to Brazil and other tropical areas where it flourished under the control of European powers, who no longer had to rely on their Middle Eastern and Asian counterparts for supply. Sugarcane is, however, exceptionally labour intensive to harvest and refine, so slaves were used to manufacture it. The sugar plantation industry was massive, and it was built on the backs of slaves.

Fortunately, that time is past us now. Around the year 1800, we learned that sugar beets could be used to extract and refine sugar, and cultivation moved north to more temperate regions. Industrialization also enabled us to use factories and machine-operated presses instead of the intensive hand-operated presses of the past.

As time has gone on, we’ve learned that too much sucrose can be harmful to our health; that’s why sugar substitutes have been created to replace it in food. There’s nothing better than good old sugar for body sugaring, though, and we’re proud to be part of a tradition that dates back to the Ancient Egyptians!

Health is a state of mind and body. We’re prone to living in our own minds, wrapping ourselves in worries and stories about things that have been and things that might be, without focusing enough on what’s real and in front of us. We don’t eat as well as we should, we might not exercise as much as we like, and we might be preoccupied with what others think of us, how we’re received by the world.

We might have a hard time keeping to a routine, or forming good habits, or keeping to a schedule, and that’s okay. Don’t worry about being perfect, don’t worry about worrying; just do your best to find what feels right and true and good to you every day. One great way of keeping ourselves in the present is by listening to our bodies. Taking full, deep breaths and really feeling the way they enter and leave the body. Touching objects, or even our own skin, to feel the sensations that come from that. Looking in the mirror and reminding ourselves that only we can live our lives, so we have to care for ourselves and be true.

We may look at ourselves and feel unsatisfied with what we see; we may feel we look too old or too young, too fat or too skinny, and that’s okay. Feeling these things, it’s important we ask ourselves why we feel this way; are we setting ourselves up by trying to conform to unrealistic standards, or is changing the way we look really important to us? When you feel unsatisfied, we should remind ourselves that life is a process, that the way we look and feel and act changes over time. We have some control over how it changes, but that control takes place over a long time, by forming habits and by being gentle with ourselves. We have to remember that there are some things we can’t change, even if we desperately want to; for the things we can’t change, it’s okay to let go of trying, because it’s no sense trying to control the uncontrollable.

We try to form good habits; to eat right and to sleep right and to laugh enough; to use the right skincare and drink enough water and exercise the right amount each day. Sometimes we might fall off the horse, and it’s good to have friends and family there to help us along the way; the best way we can help ourselves and each other is by getting back on the horse and riding again, remembering to land gently when we fall. When you feel alone, remember that every person has their own process, that we’ve all fallen off the horse; that you’re not alone in trying to improve yourself.

You might not want to try body sugaring; you might be comfortable with how you look, and you might be timid about having it done, and that’s okay. You might want to get the highest quality body sugaring, and see how it feels and how it changes your appearance; it might pique your interest. Care for your body is care for your mind.

Body hair is seen on almost all mammals; even whales often have hair at birth! Terrestrial animals tend to have a lot of hair, and when they have enough we call it fur. It’s incredibly likely that humans’ ancestors had fur, but lost it along the way; now we just have body hair, but not enough to be called furry (for the most part). The question, then, is what happened to our furriness?

One theory suggests that one of our ancestors did a lot of aquatic living. The theory says that this chain in our evolutionary link spent time in shallow waters foraging for food. Fur is no good at aquatic insulation; it becomes soggy, thick and uncomfortable, as anyone who’s seen a dog shake their coat out can tell you. We’ve seen the link between mammals without fur and water plenty of times; aquatic mammals don’t have fur, and mammals that spend a lot of time in the water, like rhinoceri and elephants, tend to have fat as an insulator instead of a mass of hair. There’s not a lot of fossil evidence for this link, though, so scientists are unsure.

The second theory is that our ancestor moved from cooler jungle climes to hot savannahs. Savannahs would have been a good hunting ground for our ancestors, who used keen eyesight and cardiovascular endurance to wear prey down by hunting them for hours at a time; such hunting expeditions would prove exhausting in the sun with a fur coat, so we shed it. The only thing this theory doesn’t account for is the savannah becoming much cooler at night, where fur would be a good insulator. Lions, hyenas and other savanna predators all have fur, so it’s unclear that an animal needs to shed it’s hairs to adapt to warmer climes.

A final reason we might have less hair than our chimpanzee cousins is to get rid of parasites. Humans are incredibly social animals, so disease carrying insects could easily infest the tight-knit groups of our ancestors. The hairier a person is, the easier it is for insects to hide on their body, so less fur would mean less chance of disease infecting the tribe. Our ancestors likely didn’t need fur when they started losing it; we’d probably already learned how to use fire and build shelters for warmth, so we no longer needed insulation from the elements.

No matter what reason we had fur for in the past, we certainly don't seem to need it now. We don clothes to keep warm, and we have shelter and heat readily available at almost anytime. We might eventually lose our body hair altogether, but in the meantime, it’s easy to keep the hair off by getting a sugaring done regularly!

We at Bare Body Sugaring love sugar; you can use it for all kinds of reasons, from making food more delicious to enhancing your cleaning products, and of course for using in skin care and hair removal. We know that sugars can be found in all kinds of things, and that a lot of different chemicals can be classified as sugar; fructose, glucose and sucrose all fit the bill, and they’re all sweet. Sucrose is table sugar, which is what we use in our body sugaring, so we thought it would be fun to see how it’s made.

The sugar you find at your table is most often made of one of two plants, sugarcane or sugar beets. Sugar beets are found in temperate regions, and so are the most commonly grown sugar plant in North America and Europe; sugarcane thrives in tropical regions, and so is seen in South America, India, and other warm countries. The plants are both manipulated in factories to extract the sucrose, but each of them have the sugar extracted in a different way.

Sugarcane begins it’s refining process near where it was harvested. The cane is chopped into small pieces and crushed in mills so that it’s sugary juices are extracted. The juice is then boiled into syrup, and pre-existing sugar crystals are added to it. This speeds up the crystallization process by spurring crystal growth. The now crystal-filled liquid is sent to a centrifuge, where it is spun to separate the crystals from the remaining liquid, which can now be used as molasses. The raw sugar is then sent to refineries, where it is purified further; hot syrup is added to the crystal, and this mixture is sent through a different type of centrifuge to separate the less refined sugar from the purer stuff. This sugar is then further cleaned, and sent through wire mesh of different sizes to create the different types of sugar you might buy.

Sugar beets are a bit easier to refine, since they have a higher sucrose content. The beets are washed and then sliced very thin; hot water is then poured over the slices, and that’s enough to extract the sugar. This juice tastes like beets, though, and that’s not something most of us want in our morning coffee; limewater and carbon dioxide are added to the mixture to take away impurities, and are then removed by filtration. The now beet-free sugar juice is further refined by being boiled, creating a thick syrup. A small sugar crystal is added, just like in sugarcane refining, and crystallization occurs. Centrifuges run, crystals are separated, mesh is used and sugar is packaged and sold.

There are a lot of handy by-products from sugar refining; molasses is used for a variety of delicious reasons, and the leaves and stems of the plants can be used to create feed for livestock. Sugar is even versatile when it’s being refined; it really is incredible how handy the stuff is!